Alex has certainly enjoyed Halloween more this year. As you remember, he didn’t even put on his costume last year. This year, he had fun dressing up at home and at school. We didn’t get too far trick-or-treating, though… just four houses before he wanted to come home. I think he was a little scared, and definitely shy.

It’s a big week. Patrick turned twenty weeks old this Monday, and Molly returned to work Monday as well. We’re all adjusting to the new routine. Where “adjusting to the new routine” is a euphemism for “not sleeping enough.” Monday night was Molly’s night to not sleep. Patrick was up every two hours. Yesterday, I tried to be helpful. I told Molly, “Go ahead, sleep downstairs tonight, I’ll stay with Patrick until the feeding times.” And that lead to hours bouncing Patrick and not sleeping. And of course, Patrick now has to adjust to his time in daycare. The teachers tell us he’s doing great and is happy – but we also know he’s not sleeping as much as normal. (Alex did the same thing. There’s so much to see in daycare.)

Hopefully, we’ll all get adjusted soon. In the meantime, we’ve got smiles like this to keep us going.

We may have just had the last weekend of good weather for the year. The thing about living in Seattle is you never know, so you treasure each sunny Autumn day.

Alex and I went to the arboretum on Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful day. Alex tripped and scraped his wrist on some gravel (you can see him touching his owie in the picture). The only drawback to the whole adventure is it seemed that every other person in Seattle had the same idea of enjoying the Autumn color. It was by far the most crowded I’ve ever seen the place.

Today, we dropped Alex off at daycare. His friend Alexa was there and was thrilled to see him. The drop-off routine was going as normal. Alex comes in, takes his coat off, and washes his hands.

Normally, I then ask Alex, “Say bye-bye to daddy!” He happily replies, “Bye-bye!” It’s a pretty painless and quick routine. But for some reason, this morning, he got a sad look and said, “No. I want to stay here with you.”

I knelt down next to him to see what was wrong. “Alex, I have to go to work,” I said. He continued looking at me sadly. But before I could say anything more, Alexa came over. In her two-year-old voice, she says to me, “It’s okay. You can go to work, and Alex will stay here.”

I thought that was nice of her. And I had an idea. I asked Alexa, “Will you play with Alex so he will be happy?”

“Yes!” she said.

Alex broke out in a big smile and they ran off together, laughing.

Second story: Tonight at dinner, I asked Alex what he had for lunch. He talked about graham crackers and fruit. So far so good. Then, he said, “Bear-day.”

“What?” I asked.

“Bear-day.”

I had no idea what he was saying. Then, he said, “Amarijoisyellowh.”

“What?” I asked again.

And then I understood what he said: “Amarillo is yellow.” (He pronounces amarillo as Amari-jo." One of the teachers in his room speaks Spanish, and I guess they’re on to colors now.

I pointed to something green and asked, “What’s that?”

“Bear-day,” he answered. Yup, bear-day was verde.

Molly & I figured out that he knew the Spanish words for yellow, blue, green, and red. He may know more words than that, but those are the only Spanish colors that the two of us know (thanks to a toy Alex got from his great-grandparents that said colors in English and Spanish!).

We could point to colors on his placemat and he’d correctly say the Spanish word. Then, he pointed to a brown elephant on the placemat and asked us, “What’s that?”

I’ve posted a lot of pictures recently, but I haven’t written many words to tell you the story behind the pictures. Here’s the story behind some of the images.

On Saturday, I took Alex to the zoo. It was just him and me; Molly had the (mostly) sleeping baby at home. We each had a good time. Alex got to see animals, and I got to try out a new lens that would really bring the animals up close:

One annoying habit Alex has developed at the zoo is a refusal to walk. He really wants to be carried around. (He’s not a big fan of a stroller, either, and I haven’t brought one to the zoo for a while.) When he was lighter, this wasn’t too much of a problem. He’s getting heavier with each trip, though, and there’s a lot of walking involved with the zoo! Once during the trip, I needed a break and put him down. There was a bench nearby with two bronze raven statues sitting on it. Alex sat and held one of the ravens for a long time and kept saying, “This is my baby.” That’s the way he refers to Patrick now, too. It’s cute. He’s a good big brother.

That evening, we took the kids to our monthly dinner club. With the proximity to Halloween, there was a spooky theme to the evening. Unlike last year’s Halloween that Wasn’t, Alex wanted to put on his costume. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get him to sing The Bear Necessities, his new favorite song.

Our friends Ben & Jenny made some great spooky desserts to go with dinner.

Yesterday, I took this picture of Alex eating dinner.

There are a couple of funny things about this photo. The first is the obvious: He’s reading the newspaper. He sees me do it at the table a lot, and recently he’s started demanding sections of the paper to read. It’s a different section each day, and once he’s made a decision, he sticks by it. “No! I want that part!” What you can’t tell just from this photo is just a minute or two later, he was looking at the newspaper upside down. He’s far from being a child prodigy. The last thing, amusing to me at least, is I know this was the ultimate in lazy dinners for Alex. The grapes are straight from the refrigerator. The peas are still frozen. In a bowl off-frame are some cold penne noodles we cooked the day before. We didn’t cook a single thing. In our defense, that’s what he asked for for dinner. “Cold noodles! I want cold noodles.”

Oh, and apparently we’ve got some other kid living at our house, too. Here he is.

OK, we’ve been back for three days now. But it takes time to get back into the routine and have time to write.

For those who don’t know, we just got back from 10 days in Minnesota. We had two big family events. First, both of our children were baptized in the Catholic church. So while my soul may be in doubt, at least my kids are in good spiritual shape.

And the second big occasion, of course, was Elsa and Adrian’s wedding. You can find all of the photos here:

It hasn’t been a whole lot of fun in our household for the past 5 days or so. Both Alex and Patrick have colds. These aren’t the kind of diseases that keep you inside all day (as you will see soon, we got out this weekend). But the stuffed-up nose means Patrick isn’t sleeping that well, which means Molly isn’t sleeping that well. (I could pretend to be chivalrous and say we’re both not sleeping well, but we all know the truth. And come to think of it, in the age of chivalry, I don’t think the knights were getting up in the middle of the night to take care of the kids. So maybe I don’t feel so bad.) And Alex has just plain been a grump, especially in the afternoons. That’s taking its toll on everybody.

We’ve still gotten out to enjoy the Fall weather. The best way to deal with a grumpy Alex is to get him outside, so maybe the cold has made us a little more willing to explore. And Fall has emphatically arrived this past weekend in Seattle: Gray skies, rain, cold mornings. We had a strong wind storm on Saturday which also seemed to be blowing away the remains of the summer. But it’s also really colorful outside right now, so I’m glad we got outside in spite of the rain and the colds.

On Saturday, we took Alex back to South 47 Farm. This farm has the pumpkin patch we took Alex to last year. Yes, he’s a lot taller now.

This is a great farm to visit with kids. In addition to pumpkins, they have animals for the kids to feed (goats, chickens, ducks, and alpacas), hay rides, live music, and a corn maze. If you ever want to have a bad parenting experience, let your two year old run off into the corn maze, unsupervised, and have a 15 second head start. Yes, that happened. Yes, Alex is fast. And luckily, he tripped about 50 feet into the maze.

I teased Alex and let him look for pumpkins.

And here he is with the pumpkin we didn’t buy. At the last minute, I decided I didn’t want a pumpkin sitting around the house for 4 weeks.

In spite of the gray and rainy weather, Alex had a great time at the farm (just like last year). We were there with his friend Asher, which certainly helped make things fun.

This morning, we met with our PEPS group at View Ridge playground. In spite of the threatening skies, we wound up having a beautiful, dry Fall morning. There had been a windstorm in Seattle on Saturday, and the playground was full of colorful leaves and branches. One family made a cool little fort out of branches with a floor lined with leaves. The PEPS kids had a great time playing in that fort, too.

Looking at the pictures from this weekend, Patrick really got the short end of the stick. He was with us at the farm and at the playground, of course, but all he did was sit in his stroller the whole time. I now understand why there are never as many pictures of second children.

Hopefully, this week will bring us healthier children and happier parents.